He looked at Cleft with cold eyes, and wished the big man dead. Cleft was muscle-bound, large, a baton in his belt strap, pepper spray too, and something that looked like a stun gun looped at his back. Ralph glanced around at the others, the twenty three boys, all with dark-encircled eyes, all looking scrawny from a night of no sleep and dreadful fear, and he shouted inside his mind.
How could they do this? How could all these parents do this to their children? What kind of world was this?
Morning had come too soon, and they’d been roused and tossed in the open showers (like the Jews, Ralph thought remembering the show on the History Channel, like the Jews being thrown in showers and gassed, or hosed down before they started on their backbreaking labor, treated not like people but like cattle), and then they all had been given uniforms, and the boys had complied. It struck Ralph as strange how everyone accepted it all; as if this was the Hell they were all consigned to, and there was no way around it. The uniforms were brown like shit, that’s what Cleft had told them, “Like you, you are shit, and you will look like shit until we make men out of you!” Then no breakfast, but barrels of water just outside the showers, and each boy, if thirsty, had to stick his head in the barrel like an animal and drink. Some didn’t, but Ralph did. He wanted water badly, he wanted to drink the entire barrel despite the other boys’ spit he saw floating in it, and the insects that had fallen in. The bugs were everywhere, from sucking mosquitoes to huge winged beetles that flew at the screen door on the barracks. And what kind of island was it? Where? Was it the Caribbean? Ralph thought it might be off the coast of Mexico somewhere, something about the light of the sky, something about the water, but his experience was limited. He knew the island was flat where they stood, raised like a plateau. There were cliffs diving down to the sea, he’d seen them when the helicopter had brought him in the night, when the blindfold had slipped slightly and he’d glimpsed the rocky cliffs and the crashing waves far below.
“Grunt!” Cleft shouted, and Ralph looked up. Cleft pushed his way through the front line of boys in their shit-colored uniforms, and found him. Cleft looked like a parody of a marine, a steroid joke, a pit bull-human love child, and when he stood right in front of Ralph, Ralph wished he would wake up. Just wake up, he told himself. It’s a dream. It has to be a dream. Piss your pants. Roll out of bed.
Cleft barked, “You worthless sack of owl dung, you keep your eyes on me, you understand? I seen a lot of boys come through here, and you are the sorriest ass piece of shit I ever saw. You hear me?”
Ralph kept his gaze forward, staring at a place just below Cleft’s eyebrows, not in the eyes, but between them.
“I said, you hear me?”
Ralph trembled slightly, feeling his knees buckle. Hunger grew from a place not in his gut, but in his extremities, his fingers, toes, the top of his head, it was like a spider tingling along his skin, squeezing his nerves. His mouth felt dry.
“I hear you like to set fires, Pig Boy,” Cleft almost whispered, but a whisper that boomed across the heads of all the other boys. “I hear you did something really nasty to another boy back home. I heard you—” Ralph shut his eyes for a second and in his mind he was flying over all the others, he was going up to the cottony clouds. He felt hunger leave him, he felt tension leave him, he felt everything fly away from his body.
With a sickening feeling, he opened his wet eyes.
Then Cleft glanced down from Ralph’s face to his chest, then his crotch. Cleft laughed, a nasty sound. “Baby Pig Boy here has pissed his panties!” Cleft clapped his hands together. “He’s pissed his panties like a big Baby Pig Boy, haw! You can put out a lot of fires with that piss, can’t you Pig Boy?”
Then, Cleft shoved him hard in the chest, so hard Ralph fell backwards on his ass. He looked up at the big man, the bulging muscles, the sharp crew cut, the hawk nose, and gleaming teeth. “Let me show you how to put out a fire, men!” Cleft laughed as he spoke, unzipping his pants and Ralph screeched at first — like an owl — as the piss hit his face. Cleft continued shouting, telling him that to be a man, one had to first prove himself worthy of manhood, one had to accept humiliation at the hands of one’s superior, one had to take what one deserved whether one liked it or not, one had to know one’s place—”You like to set things on fire, grunt, but you need a man to put out the fire inside you!”
Just kill me, Ralph thought. Just kill me.
We are just like the Jews in the concentration camps, Ralph thought, glancing to the others who still had their eyes forward, their lips drawn downward, looking scrawnier and weaker than boys of thirteen to sixteen should look, looking like they would all have been happy to not have Cleft pissing on them, happy that Ralph was the first sacrifice of the day, happy to die.
Just die.
It became a routine that they neither looked forward to, nor complained about, and the others who had sat up with Ralph the first night never spoke together again. Ralph would give Marsh a knowing look, and Marsh would return it, but for a millisecond before his eyes glazed over in what Ralph came to think of as “Clefteye.” It was the zombie-like way they were all getting, Ralph included. When he lay asleep in his lower bunk, he could hear Hugh weeping in his sleep, then whimpering like a puppy, and sometimes Ralph stayed up all night listening for Hugh to cry, and it would help him fall asleep if only for an hour or two. Food got better, but not good. From the first two days of water only, they went to bread and water. By the end of the first week, they were having beans, rice, water, bread, and an apple. By the second week, it was beans, rice, water, bread, milk, apple, and some tasteless fish. Ralph noticed that his diarrhea had stopped by the third week, as did most of the boys’. The labor was grueling, but Ralph didn’t mind it because while he hacked at the logs, or while he chipped at stone with what seemed to be the most primitive of tools, he remembered his family and home and his dog, and it was, after awhile, almost like being with them until the workday was over. The maneuvers began at night. Cleft, and the six others who ran the camp, had them running obstacle courses in the stench of evening when the mosquitoes were at their worst, when the mud was hot and slick, when the sweat could almost speak as it ran down his back. Wriggling like snakes beneath barbed wire, climbing ropes to dizzying heights, leaping from those heights into mud, running across narrow, stripped logs, piled end to end, it all became second nature after the initial falls and screams. Foghorn, as they called a large boy in Hut D, fell and broke his leg the first day of the obstacle course, and Jesus, the little boy that Ralph had never heard say so much as a word, got cut on the barbed wire, badly, across his shoulders, and then got an infection when it went untreated. After the third week, none of the boys saw Jesus anymore. Some said he’d been sent back home. Some said he’d died. Some said he’d run off. Some said it was all bullshit and he was probably back with his dad in New York City, lucky bastard, with a scar on his shoulder, and an excuse for not being in Camp Hell.
Rumors circulated that Jack and Marsh had been caught jacking each other off. The next time Ralph saw them, he also noticed bruises around their eyes and on their arms. Boys had ganged up on them, but Ralph didn’t want to know about it. He was somewhere else. He didn’t need to be among any of them, he was in a place of family and fire in his head, and although his muscles felt like they were tearing open when he lay down in his bunk at night, he knew that he was growing stronger both inside and outside.
And then, one day, Jack came to him.
“Got any more matches?”
Ralph opened his eyes. It had to be four a.m., just an hour or so before First Call.
The shadow over him gradually revealed itself in the purple haze of approaching dawn.
“What the—”
“Matches?” Jack asked again. “You’re like the fireboy, right?”
“No.”
“Liar. Come on, wake up. We have something to show you.”
“I don’t care. Leave me alone.” Ralph turned on his side, shutting his eyes.
> “He pissed on you. Don’t you hate him?”
Ralph kept his vision dark. If he didn’t open his eyes, it might all go away. “I don’t care.”
“You will care,” Jack said. The next thing Ralph knew, it was morning, the horn blasted, the rush of ice cold showers, the sting of harsh soap, the barrels of water and then chow. Out in the gravel pit, shoveling, someone tossed pebbles across Ralph’s back. He looked over his shoulder.
“Leave me alone,” Ralph spat, the dirt sweat sliding across his eyes; he dropped his shovel, looking back at Jack.
“You set fires back home, I know that,” Jack whispered. “We all know it. It’s all right. It’s what you love. Don’t let them kill that. We need you.”
“Yeah, well, we all did something. What did you do to get you sent here?”
Jack said nothing for a moment.
“We found Jesus,” Jack said, and tears erupted in his eyes. Ralph wanted to shout at him not to cry anymore, there was no reason to cry, that he was weak to cry, just like Cleft said—
Ralph asked, “Where is he?”
“Dead,” Jack said. “They killed him. They killed him and they hid him so we couldn’t find him. Did you know he was only ten years’ old?”
“Bullshit,” Ralph gasped. “He’s thirteen.”
“Ten years’ old and his father sent him here after he left his mother. His father sent him because his father didn’t give a damn about him. You, Ralph, you set fires. And me, I maybe did some stuff I’m not real proud of. But Jesus, all he did was get born in the wrong family. And they killed him.”
Ralph closed his eyes. Tried to conjure up the vision of his family and home again, and the beautiful fires he had set at the old shack in the woods, the fires that had made him feel weak and strong all at once and connected with the world. But only darkness filled his mind. Opened his eyes. Jack’s face, the bruises lightening, his eyes deep and blue, the dark tan bringing out the depth of the color of those eyes, a God blue. “Dead?”
“Yep.” Jack said this without any hostility.
“How?”
Jack glanced over at Red Chief and Commodore, the two thugs disguised as soldiers who stood above the gravel pit, barking at some of the slower boys. “Keep digging, and I’ll tell you, but do you know what I think we’re digging?”
Ralph cocked his head to the side, trying to guess.
“Our own graves.”
Jack continued. “Me and Marsh been trying to find a way out every single night. We wait till three thirty, when the goons are asleep with only one on watch, and we get mud all over us, and we do the snake thing and Marsh and me get away from the barracks until we go out on the island, and we see that there’s no way anybody’s getting off this island without killing themselves, that’s why security ain’t so tight. It’s a nothing island, maybe two square miles at the most, with nothing. The thugs’ huts are in the east, and between those and ours and the work pits, there ain’t a hell of a whole lot. But we find this thin crack opening between these rocks just beyond the thug huts, and we squeeze in—that’s all the bruises—”
“I thought you got beat up.”
Jack held his temper. “That’s what we said, dumbshit, so nobody would know.”
“I thought you two…”
Jack cut in. “We spread that story, fool. So we squeeze through the opening, and it’s too dark to see, and this cave that we’re hoping will take us out ends within six feet of entering it, only we feel something there in the dark, we feel something all mushy and stinky and only when Marsh falls on it and screams does he realize it’s a body.”
It was Jesus de Miranda, the littlest boy at camp, dead not from an infection but from something that smashed his hands up and his knees, too. Ralph heard the rest, tried to process it, but it made him sick.
“Where are we?” he whispered, leaning against Jack.
“All I know is, I think we’re all dead.”
“All?”
“I think,” Jack said. “I think they’re going to just kill all of us. I don’t think any of us are leaving.”
Jack stuck four small rocks in Ralph’s pockets.
“Later. They’ll be useful,” Jack said.
“Just like the Concentration Camps,” Ralph whispered, and then Commodore shouted at him, and he returned to shoveling while the blistering sun poured lava on his back.
“I said get up here, you worthless Pig Boy!” Commodore yelled.
By the time Ralph made it up from the pit, crawling along the edges, he scraped his knees up and was out of breath.
“Something you want to share with the rest of us?” Commodore said, his eyes invisible behind his mirrored sunglasses. “I saw you chattering down there, Pig Boy.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ralph coughed.
“Something wrong?”
Ralph covered his mouth, hearing the balloon hiss of air from his lungs.
“Asthma,” he gasped. “I don’t have…my inhaler…”
“It’s all in your tiny brain, Pig Boy, you don’t need some inhaler like a mama’s boy, you just need to focus. You need to be a man, Pig Boy,” Commodore laughed, and shoved Ralph down in the dirt. Ralph felt his windpipe closing up, felt his lungs fight for air. He could not even cough. His eyes watered up, and he opened his mouth, sucking at air.
Commodore lifted him up again, bringing his face in line with Ralph’s. Eye to eye, Commodore snarled, “Breathe, damn you!”
Ralph gasped. He knew he would die. He knew his lungs would stop. His vision darkened until all he could see were the man’s brown eyes. He thought of little Jesus, dead, his hands smashed into bloody clay. Dust seemed to fill his mouth.
“Breathe!” Commodore continued, and reached over, pressing his hand down hard on Ralph’s chest. “You want to be a man, Pig Boy, you breathe like a man, open up those lungs, make ‘em work,” and suddenly, air whooshed into Ralph’s mouth.
The darkness at the edge of his vision erased itself into the light of day.
Ralph sucked at the air like he was starving for it.
“There,” Commodore said, and pushed Ralph back down in the dirt. “You boys, you think you can create the world in your own image. That’s your problem. You think you can keep from growing up. Well, growing up means accepting the burden just like the rest of us. Accept it, accept the truth, and you’ll thrive. Keep doing what you’ve been doing, and you’ll die.”
Ralph sat on the ground, staring up at the man. The air tasted pure. He gulped it down, feeling his lungs burn.
TO BE A MAN
YOU MUST KILL THE CHILD
YOU MUST BURY THE CHILD
YOU MUST GROW UP
YOU MUST ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS
YOU MUST TAKE ON THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF OTHERS
YOU MUST BURN
YOU MUST FREEZE
YOU MUST GIVE YOURSELF TO US
They shouted it in the morning, still shivering from the icy waters that erased their dreams, standing in the shimmering day, a mirage of day, for in their hearts, they never felt dawn. At night, Last Call, the bells ringing three times, running for a last cold shower, running for the latrine, and then Light’s Out.
“He’s under the hut,” Jack said.
He’d gathered Hugh, Marsh, a boy named Gary, a boy named Lou, and Ralph wanted to see, too, to see if they were telling the truth about Jesus. At three a.m., they all hunkered down, crawling like it was another maneuver under barbed wire to get out of the hut unnoticed; then under the hut’s raised floor, down a narrow tunnel that might’ve been dug out by jackals. Jack and Marsh had dug an entrance that led down into a larger hole, and there, in the dark, they all felt Jesus’ body, smelled it, some vomited, others gagged. Ralph reached into the dead boy’s pocket and drew out the last match, the one he’d given the little boy the first night they’d met to keep him from the dark.
Ralph struck the match against a rock, and it sputtered into crackling light.
They all looked
at Jesus, at the rotting, the insects already devouring his puffy face, the way his hands were bloody pulps, his kneecaps all but destroyed.
“Holy—”
“—Shit”
“They did it,” Jack said.
“Mother—”
“Yeah—”
“Holy—”
“Is that really him?” Gary asked.
“It has to be,” Marsh said.
“Who else?” Ralph said, and then the last match died.
Sitting in the dark, the stink of the boy’s corpse filling them, Ralph said, “If we let this go, we’ll die. Right here. You all know about concentration camps in World War II. You all know what happens. This is just like it.”
“Yeah,” Lou said. “They killed him. Man, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe my mom would send me here. I can’t believe…”
“Believe,” Jack said. Ralph felt Jack’s hand give Ralph a squeeze. “Maybe our folks don’t know what they do here. Shit, I doubt Jesus’ father even knows.”
“I can’t believe it either,” Ralph said. “They’re monsters.”
“They aren’t human, that’s for sure,” Marsh added.
“What are we gonna do?” Jack asked the darkness.
“What can we do?” Ralph countered.
“Someone should so something,” Gary moaned.
Then, they crawled out of the ground, up to their hut. The diffuse moonlight spattered the yard, lit the barracks and huts and showers and the boy’s faces were somehow different in the night, flatter, more alike than Ralph had remembered them being. Before they went inside, Jack turned to Ralph and said, “Too bad you wasted that match. We could’ve set fire to this place with it.”
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